Vida Verde (“green life”) is a group of nine Brazilian housecleaners that advertises itself as “environmentally sound cleaning.” Launched last December, the group uses only natural homemade cleaning products.

By Richard Cherecwich

Ivone Desanoski, a Brazilian immigrant and Brighton resident, worked for a housecleaning company after coming to the United States a few years ago. After a year, she felt constantly nauseated, had a dry throat and dealt with several bloody noses, caused by the cleaning products she used daily.

She couldn’t stop, though.

“I needed work. I wanted to stop, but I wanted to continue working,” she said.

Luckily, the Vida Verde co-op was there to help.

Vida Verde (“green life”) is a group of nine Brazilian housecleaners that advertises itself as “environmentally sound cleaning.” Launched last December, the group uses only natural homemade cleaning products.

Founder Monica Chianelli started the journey to Vide Verde seven years ago when she emigrated from Brazil. She worked cleaning houses, but the strong chemicals affected her asthma. A friend turned her on to natural cleaning products, and she went from there.

Around the same time, she began volunteering at the Brazilian Women’s Group, headquartered on Cambridge Street in Allston. She began teaching 15-minute classes to show housecleaners the alternatives, while a doctor discussed the health impacts of using common cleaning chemicals.

This made her realize she wanted to work with more women and more directly.

“I thought it would be a good idea to form the co-op,” she said. “But we didn’t have any money.”

The money came in a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in the winter of 2004, and Chianelli discovered making her own natural products would be cheaper.

In association with the women’s group, she began holding training sessions to teach other Brazilian housecleaners, but talked to them about what they wanted as well.

“We could offer them an idea and some options, but we could not offer a job,” Chianelli said. “We had to get ideas from them. The co-op could not just be me, we told them we would form this together.”

Seven cleaners completed the initial training courses, and the co-op officially launched in December of last year.

“Behind this idea, the main goal is to show people how they can be more active in the community and participate in what’s going one,” Heloisa Galvoa, the executive director of the Brazilian Woman’s Group, said. “The group is to empower the woman immigrant. We tell women to use natural products, but it’s not that simple. We really want them to think that they can open small businesses and own their own schedule.”

The members of Vida Verde make six cleaning products such as furniture polish, glass cleaner and floor cleaner from ingredients as basic as water, vinegar and borax.

“This is the old-fashioned way to clean,” said member Carla de Castro as Chianelli mixed up some floor cleaner, which is half water, half vinegar and some vitamin and peppermint oils added for scent. All of the products go into recycled plastic bottles, and the co-op sells them to its members for as little as 75 cents a bottle.

A typical housecleaner works from 8 a.m.-6 p.m. and may clean six to seven houses a day as a team in an assembly-line manner with each woman taking on a job, Chianelli said.

“The problem is, if I clean bathrooms, I could clean 100 in a week,” she said.

Added de Castro, “If you’re good at vacuuming, all day long it’s vacuum, vacuum, vacuum.”

Now, the cleaners create their own schedules with clients.

They are still allowed to clean houses independently away from the co-op, but members are grateful for Vide Verde.

“Before we were just cleaning houses. Now, we part of something bigger,” de Castro said.

For more information about the Vide Verde co-op, visit http://verdeamarelo.org/vidaverde/welcome.html.